The Albany Symphony's jam-packed American Music Festival culminates on Saturday evening at EMPAC with a concert highlighting music by two of our country's most preeminent composers, the Pulitzer Prize-winners John Corigliano and David Del Tredici. A joint phone interview with them turned out to be just as fun and revealing as hoped. Corigliano, 81, spoke from his country home in Putnam County and Del Tredici, 82, from his apartment/studio in Greenwich Village.

The conversation began with high spirits and good feelings, plus some teasing. I asked if anyone could remember when or how they first met. No one was quite sure, but they agreed that it was at least 50 years ago and was probably through a mutual friend, composer Phillip Ramey. They proceeded to reminisce about a couple of unusual residencies they shared, one in Fiji for concerts and another in Trinidad where they were judges in a steel drum competition.

Corigliano: You were leaning on a palm tree holding up two coconuts as your breasts. I took a picture.

Del Tredici: There were these huge pigs served for dinner and they disappeared on your plate.

Corigliano: I used to be more adventurous.

Del Tredici: I was always afraid, but I'm glad I did these kinds of things. You started me on collecting African masks. And we both have them in our apartments, don't we?

Corigliano: So many kindnesses from one composer to another. David and I just love being together.

Del Tredici: We have a similar relationship to music – emotional expression.

Corigliano: We compose for the same reasons.

Del Tredici: And we put our life experiences into our music.

The upcoming concert features large scale works by each composer, and both pieces date from 1968. Corigliano's Piano Concerto One is one his first works for orchestra. It was premiered by pianist Hilde Somers and the San Antonio Symphony and conductor Victor Alessandro. It has been recorded four times. Philip Edward Fisher will be soloist with the ASO.

Del Tredici says he's not heard his "Pop-Pourri" in at least 30 years. With an orchestra supplemented by rock instruments (saxophones and electric guitars), the piece is a reflection of its origin in the '60s. It remains significant because it was Del Tredici's first setting of texts by Lewis Carroll, which became a decades-long obsession. He revised the piece in 1972 and that version (to be performed by the ASO) was premiered by conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Soprano Hila Plitmann returns for the upcoming revival, which will be recorded.

Looking back, Corigliano and Del Tredici see younger versions of themselves in their respective pieces.

Corigliano: I'd never heard a large orchestra play my music. Alessandro put me in a chair onstage and listening to them was like getting a blast of heat that blows you to the back of the chair. There's nothing like the first time you hear an orchestra play your music. It was so thrilling and to think that all those things were in my head. And the music was so fast.

Del Tredici: Most good music sounds like it was written fast.

Corigliano: You never know if it will all work. I remember Samuel Barber had a piano concerto opening at Lincoln Center and he was white as a sheet. And I thought, if Sam Barber is nervous, I guess my nervousness is OK.

Del Tredici: The last part of composing is hearing it. We should have out of town tryouts.

Del Tredici: And back before computers, if you want to put a section up a half step, it's an enormous thing to do.

Corigliano: I was very in love with Americana – Copland, Bernstein, Piston, Barber. So it was that kind of sound, with a lot more energy because I was neurotic. I can say it's a very American sound with some Stravinsky thrown in. When I hear it, I like it very much. I wouldn't change a note, but it's not the composer I am now.

Del Tredici: I think of pieces I wrote as a versions of me frozen in a certain timeframe. I came to music by way of Schoenberg and I went to Princeton to study with Roger Sessions. So my tonal rebellion was more extreme because of that. This piece also has my rebellion against the church. There's a liturgy, scenes with Alice, and also a Bach chorale. And I misspelled "potpourri." Never have joke titles! So it's a bizarre mix of things. I didn't know anything about orchestration, but I didn't have the sense to worry about that. I couldn't know what I didn't know.

Another parallel between the composers is that each had successful careers as teachers. Del Tredici taught at Harvard, Boston University, and the City College of New York, and Corigliano at the Manhattan School of Music, Lehman College and Juilliard. Over the years, they've exchanged students many times. Asked for observations about the struggle involved in launching a career, they turned the talk to musical content and style.

Del Tredici: You can usually spot a gifted composer instantly and they stay that way.

Corigliano: The language now is much freer. At Manhattan a student had a piece played and it was beautiful, Straussian. But he was so intimidated by modernism that he didn't want to correct his parts, thinking that any errors in the parts might make him come off as more modern. That was a pathetic thing, for his young peers to look down on something tonal. Today it's changed, I don't think they care.

Del Tredici: It's bewilderingly broad now.

Corigliano: In Europe now they're still forced to write a special way.

Del Tredici: The wall between classical and popular is vanishing. That makes me nervous. I don't know where I am anymore.

Another commonality between Del Tredici and Corigliano is their shared association with the ASO's music director David Alan Miller. Of course, after a long tenure marked a devotion to contemporary music, Miller has ties to pretty much every established or up and coming American composer.

Del Tredici: He recently recorded a talk with me at Stonewall. What other conductor would do that?

Corigliano: He's a fabulous guy but also a great musician. He does what you want and has got a really good band there. They give really incredible performances.